Remember the day when you made the
ultimate decision to change your life? Yes, it was the day when you
decided to start your own home business. Gosh, I remember the
anxiety when I uploaded my very first web site, waiting for
something to happen. It’s like going onto a stage and performing in
front of a large crowd.Ok,
what has this to do with affiliate programs and how to make money
with them? Not much other than this is the primary reason why people
spending money online. Emotions are the number one selling factor,
period. And newbie web masters are loaded with emotions.
When you started your home
business, did you have a product to sell? Neither did I. That’s why
affiliate programs are perfect for startup home businesses. In a
nutshell, an affiliate sells products from somebody else and keeps a
commission from each sale. An affiliate id responsible for all the
advertising and only gets paid whenever there’s a sale.
Take a break and think about this
for a minute. Every day there are thousands of people online,
searching for products and ideas to make money with. They know that
there’s big money to make and they are eager to get started. When
you started your home business it probably never crossed your mind
to sell your own products and to run your own affiliate program.
If you’re in the online business
for a while with mediocre results it is time to switch sides. Why
should you carry most of the risk with your advertisement spending
with less than satisfactory sales results? Not to mention that
you’re at the mercy of somebody else’s reliability to send you your
hard earned money.
If you don’t have a product to
sell, go out there and search for products with master resale
rights. This will grant you the exclusive rights to sell the product
and keep 100% of the profits. Selling the product through affiliates
doesn’t violate this, because you’re paying your affiliates for the
advertising efforts, the final sale is still made by you.
Of course there are a million
products with master resale rights available. Choose your product
wisely. You don’t want to start an affiliate program with products
that are already over marketed and maybe available for free or as
part of a bonus package. This takes some time and research, but it
is well worth the effort.
One source is to research the
public domain sector and compile your own information product. There
are numerous publications available on this topic. Another source is
to join a membership program that sells master resale rights
products. Make sure that they offer unique products and check their
rules. Many offer a trial membership, take advantage of this.
Once you have your product start
your affiliate program. Don’t join one of the many services that
offer affiliate program services for a monthly fee. Here’s why.
Having thousands of affiliates advertising your product is a great
thing. Having thousands of free links to your web site is priceless.
Create as many advertising samples
for your affiliates as possible. Have these samples point to
different entry points to your web site. Banners are the worst
advertising tools, but newbie web masters love them. They are easy
to implement. What do you care, you got your free link to your
website. Make sure that you use search engine friendly affiliate
links. Affiliate links with a “?” are recognized as such. Better are
the affiliate links that look like a directory structure. The easy
way to implement this is to use PHP as your language of choice.
Guess what will happen after a few
months running your own affiliate program from your website? Your
own web site will skyrocket in rankings on any search engine,
because you got so many links to your web site without having a link
farm on your own. This is every web masters dream. Now you have a
choice. You either aggressively promote your affiliate program or
you promote your products. Either way you win.
If you’re still skeptical, go to
Google or Yahoo and search for links pointing to your favorite
affiliate program. Simply type ‘links:’ and your affiliate program’s
domain name into the search field. Make sure you don’t have any
blanks. This will return all the websites that are linking back to
this affiliate program. Check out the number on the right upper
corner where it says ‘Results 1 – 10 of about x’. x stands for the
total number of links. Now do the same for your website. Hmm, you
got nothing? Well, that’s the difference. I hope you see the power
of this by now.
Before you go out there and slab
together your own affiliate program. Do your homework and research
as much as possible. You want to get it right the first time.
Good luck to you all,
Peter Dobler
© 2005
About the author:
Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran
in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a
successful Internet business owner. Learn more about wealth building
methods at
http://www.thefasttracktowealth.com
